Studies of the deformation styles of the rubber-pad forming process used for manufacturing metallic bipolar plates

Rubber pad forming as a novel stamping technique has been widely used in the deep drawing, bulging, blanking, and flanging processes. It is a feasible method for manufacturing metallic bipolar plates, the surface of which has multi-array flow channels. For a single channel's fabrication, there are two different deformation styles: concave and convex. In this paper, the deformation characteristics of the two deformation styles are analyzed in detail with numerical simulation and experimental methods. The proper application conditions of the concave and convex deformation styles used to fabricate a certain metallic bipolar plate have been determined. If the ratio of the channel width to the rib width w/s>1w/s>1, the concave style is more appropriate; otherwise, the convex style is preferred. Based on this theory, a bipolar plate sample (w/s<1w/s<1) is successfully manufactured by the convex rubber-pad forming process.